MC Press Online is pleased to announce the launch of its completely new Web site designed to help System i professionals be more productive on the job and get more out of their career. Rest assured that the site still contains all of the content and features that you've come to expect, but it now also offers several powerful enhancements you're sure to find extremely useful:

When considering a technology solution for your business, something as simple as patience can make all the difference in ensuring a successful implementation. In the rush to solve legitimate business issues, many companies needlessly struggle through technology deployments because key steps in the planning process were hurried, broad-brushed, or missed.

In fact, solving business issues is less about the technology and more about clearly understanding the problem, the impact a change makes across the organization, and the way any implementation will interact with current systems. If you're ready to solve a specific business issue with a technology solution, the best advice is to allow adequate time to follow proven business design development steps, the majority of which happen well before seeking out a specific software or hardware solution.

The proper management of security starts way before and goes way beyond technical decisions. Technical decisions are extremely important for proper information security management, but they are neither the starting point nor the most important decisions related to effective information security management.

Yet most organizations treat information security as a purely technical issue. This, in my opinion, is why we keep seeing major incidents at large and familiar organizations (e.g., TJX). Not until high-level management understands that security is primarily a business issue and begins to assert its proper role in the security process will the state of affairs in information security begin to change. Only when this happens will it be possible to ensure the appropriate execution of the other roles. The objective of this article is to support this assertion and to describe the security business process needed to make meaningful improvements in the management of information security in the entire industry.